Fury DPS: 4.0 and Cataclysm

During DW, mastery almost equal streangth in value. However hit/haste should still be better then crit when those ratings are so low and you have the 2p 13. The best DPS gain for tendron should be to reforge everything to mastery with hit as second priority.

You would need to take into account the timing of the exposures. If you are killing the amalgamations fast enough you won't have death wish back up for the second exposure. This would greatly reduce the benefit of a high mastery build. You can offset this slightly by popping DW 5-8 seconds early for the first exposure.

In regards to a high mastery build I would be interested to see what would happen if you force procc'd heroic Soulshifter Vortex (3278 mastery). It could obviously require you to stop damage for about 10 seconds before the exposure. The biggest problem I could think of would be if you were getting to the exposures before the ICD was back up.

With a high mastery build I hit 2173 rating (79%) which is a 35% death wish bonus. Proccing the trinket= 5451 mastery (181%) causing death wish to do 56% bonus damage. This would also affect your bonus damage from enrage.

This would cause insane burst for the first exposure, but low damage for the second exposure, and possible rage problems from the low hit rating.

The problem with that is that I'm pretty much the only "competitive" SMF warrior with enough WOL logs to consider when comparing to TG. After having a discussion with the people who sort out simcraft for SMF we concluded that a lot of stuff hadn't been implemented correctly. Arms is without a doubt better than Fury right now but when you're simply making the choice between going SMF or TG I'd personally think twice.

Errors in the recent simcrafts were:

The fact that Heroic Strike is favored over RB during Inner Rage or whenever you're close enough to make it to your next Inner Rage without capping rage. Second minor thing was that Gurthalak procs were overestimated. As we know now it doesn't simply just proc off everything in the main and offhand.The third error was that initially Simcraft did not use Heroic leap on cooldown which is another (minor) SMF advantage due to the 20% overall bonus damage.

A last thing to keep in mind is that there are heroic weapons (although not BIS) available to SMF throughout the entire progression phase while Arms will effectively be using a normal ilevel weapon until the patch (and expansion) is cleared, which imo makes the entire "bis" issue debatable as it won't really contribute to your performance when it matters.

Considering fights like Hagara where proper cleaving on ice tombs can be a considerable boost to your dps I'd also guess SMF to be the most favorable spec on that fight due to cleaves being a lot stronger.

One of the things that SMF has going for it is rage management. Faster swings lead to more room to "play" with your rage. Weapon misses aren't as damaging when you have low rage which mean you can expend more rage during colossus smash, and on the flip side you can allow your rage to get closer to capping without actually capping due to the smaller chunks of rage you gain from each swing.

I would recommend SMF to newer fury players as rage management is easier, which can lead to dps gains over TG as mistakes aren't punished quite as much. Also, once this new player has gotten used to the rotation, they can take advantage of the additional "play" room and dump more rage into colossus smash in comparison to TG.

Unfortunately, arms is just so much better than fury at this time that it's just kind of silly to use fury at all unless it's on heroic spine. However, SMF is probably better than TG before Gurthtalak, where TG pulls ahead slightly.

For those on Heroic Spine and considering what to do. This is what I found that worked with me.

The Valor on use trinket should be one of your trinkets. On our first few attempts before our kill, I went with a low exp (15) and low hit forge tactic. Which helps you get bigger RBs and more damage for DW, but be ready, you will miss/dodge/parry alot on the Hideous, which is almost just as important to dps down fast, especially on the 3rd plate, with all those bloods spawning up.

On our kill attempt, I went with a 24 exp and 11% hit. Which made a big difference, dps on the hideous went up and burst damage on tendon, suffered only like a 200 dps lost. Which shouldnt make or break your overall raid's dps on the tendon.

Also before I went fury, I did try arms. Per tendon I was doing around 1.3mil per tendon and as fury I was steadily doing 1.7mil per tendon. Damage varied, but that was on average. So atleast for one fight, I can say fury is better for burst damage on tendons than arms.

If you are actually saying you were doing 1.7 per tendon and not per exposure (you might just be expressing it wrong), then that is pathetic.A mastery heavy/hit build with extremely low expertise (7) using aparratus as your trinket of choice is what i found to be the best build.Having 1.9-2.2 mill per burst exposure and a total of 3.2-3.3 per tendon is very good and you can keep up the dps on the amalgamation by forcin the enrages.

It depends on what part of the fight you are struggling.If you are struggling on getting the tendons down on 2 shots (which shouldn't be that much of an issue anymore but well, not everyone raids with 25 fully capable people) then low expertise builds are mandatory.Also, the amalgamation dps is not an issue either till the 6th amalgamation (the amalgamation for the 2nd exposure on the 3d tendon), and if you are having troubles there you should consider using hero and pots at that part of the fight -note that at that part of the fight there is no aoe being done and everyone should be focusing on getting the last amalgamation down as fast as possible-.

I would be interested to see logs of fury doing 9+ mil to tendons on kills as that claim seems absurd. With that said amalg dps is tighter than tendon burst now imo whenever you are pushing it in 3 grips from corruptions so having 26 or close expertise is a pretty significant gain in those areas compared to the loss on tendons as Aglia said. For lust timing lusting on the first exposure 3rd plate allows for a few deaths at the end of the fight while still killing the tendon and the lust runs over into that amalg so its win/win.

If you are actually saying you were doing 1.7 per tendon and not per exposure (you might just be expressing it wrong), then that is pathetic.A mastery heavy/hit build with extremely low expertise (7) using aparratus as your trinket of choice is what i found to be the best build.Having 1.9-2.2 mill per burst exposure and a total of 3.2-3.3 per tendon is very good and you can keep up the dps on the amalgamation by forcin the enrages.

Im definatly gonna call bs on those numbers. Ive been using a heavy mastery build with high crit and medium hit, the vp trinket along with 2 piece tier 12(i am able to sub 2 397 tier items for it so no big stat loss) and average 1.9-2.4 per tendon. Maxed out at 1.7 mill on the first half of the tendon. A slightly slower guild on the tendons might up your dps time a tad, but no way you can pull 3.3 million on a tendon without insane luck. Noone ive seen in my guild ever pulls that on a tendon, short of the very occasional mage.

You are using the vp trinket on a masteryc/crit build.If you were using apparatus on mastery/hit build, you would see that getting up to 2.2 per exposure (with hero and pot) is not that hard as you might think. But well, i guess you might not understand that having 6k mastery during burst period might work wonders for you. Just for you info though, raging blow with popped apparatus crits for around 200-240k (120-145k mh 80-100k oh). So, if 1 ability can crit for that much do you still think that doing 1.9-2.2 per each first exposure is that hard?

You are using the vp trinket on a masteryc/crit build.If you were using apparatus on mastery/hit build, you would see that getting up to 2.2 per exposure (with hero and pot) is not that hard as you might think. But well, i guess you might not understand that having 6k mastery during burst period might work wonders for you. Just for you info though, raging blow with popped apparatus crits for around 200-240k (120-145k mh 80-100k oh). So, if 1 ability can crit for that much do you still think that doing 1.9-2.2 per each first exposure is that hard?

Well numbers during heroism could easily get to 2.2m during the first exposure, but even if you are getting 1.9m per first exposure when heroism isnt up(not 100% convinced you are) you are not gonna get anywhere near 3.3m per tendon. You really wanna convince me you can do 1.4m on the 2nd half of a tendon with no cds, and what should be a tendon that starts at 35-40% hp? With that level of mastery you would likely be doing even lower damage the 2nd half than the build im using.

Ill try out that build and see how it edits my numbers, but the numbers you are stating would beat even rogues and mages, who should be doing the most imho. Need to see some logs before i believe that.

I want to believe you, but your numbers would put you 1.5-2million above any logs ive seen for a full fight tendon dmg.

Your numbers are greatly skewed neekko, you only did 5.6M to tendons on your kill (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis) at 1.9 per exposure that would mean you could of done at least 5.7 on those 3 alone, ignoring the second exposures all together.

Highest damage I saw on first half of a tendon was 1.8 million, highest for a full tendon was around 2.5million. Average came in at around 1.9 million.

The first half of the raid was done with my former build, Mastery>Crit with Rotting Skull.

14605 AP
2.01% Haste
9.21% Hit
27.48% Crit
11/8 Exp
17.6 Mastery

Highest damage for the first half was 1.7 million, highest for a full tendon was again 2.5 million. Average came out at 2.1 million.

Of course these numbers aren't exact and the peaks are just based on what i observed in around 10 attempts with each build(no lust/heroism was ever used as we aren't getting onto the final tendon yet). While the Mastery/Hit build did seem to have higher burst potential(i saw a couple 200k RBs with 5600~ mastery during trinket, but they were very rare), its damage was less consistent and had an overall lower average due to how low it was on the 2nd half of the tendons. Damage on the fight outside the tendons seemed quite similar, the mastery/crit build had more trouble with rage, but would do more damage when rage management was working out.

There may be other builds that are better than what i opted to use but in comparing these two crit seems better. Another big factor is the trinket, with a 2 minute cooldown Apparatus was not always up(generally it wasn't up for the 2nd part of the 1st tendon, but was up for the 2nd part of the 2nd tendon) wheras rotting skull was 100% of the time.

Hit just doesn't seem to make as much sense to me, pre-stacking executioner and guaranteeing 100 rage going into it I rarely ever had rage issues with the crit build, might get 1-2 more heroic strikes(at most) in with more hit but not enough to justify the loss of 7% crit.

All the numbers above assume not losing dps time on the tendons due to grip.

You can combine both using RS and AoK:
1) use AoK 20-15s before the plate lifts up (in our raid it was 10s before the fourth stun, but it may differ in yours)
2) use DW shortly before AoK wears out (10-5s before the plate lifts up, if your ranges suck you may be stunned during this whole timeframe and then you will deal a lot less damage)
3) use Battleshout 1s after the amalgamation dies for 2pT12
4) BT->CS->[RS+Reck+IR]

Reck, DW and AoK will only be ready for the first half of the tendon.

I was using this with as much Mastery that it is only a little over Crit and Hit>Crit>Haste with as less Expertise as possible.

Hi, I'm a prot warrior OT, trying to maximize my dps for Hagara. Fury seems better by quite a bit because of the burst, but I can't decide between SMF or TG. I have access to N Gurth/H Slicer and N Souldrinker/N No'Kaled/H Hand of Morchok. Given the problems expressed earlier in this thread, I don't really trust simcraft. Feel free to add advice as far as TG/SMF.

The reason I'm posting is that I'm not sure whether Souldrinker was rated accounting for the extra HP with Rallying Cry/Blood DK 4 set. Does Rallying Cry put N SD above N No'kaled or H HoM? Obviously assuming you didn't need Rallying Cry for saving the raid, should it be used with damage CDs or whenever it comes back up?

EDIT: I'm willing to do some tests to find out, but I'm not sure about the best way to test this sort of thing, RNG and all. Any suggestions?

Armsaun, I think I've tried it all and here are my suggestions (not just for haggara, but in general):

Go for N Gurth/H Slicer. 2x H HoM are comparable, may be better for fights where the gurth procs would not be very helpful like Haggara or Spine. N nokaled/ h HoM pair is more or less ok too.
After all, fury spec is not so weapon dependent as arms.

And forget about souldrinker. nothing would put it anywhere near H HoM or even nokaled.

I suppose I could've just done some quick math, had it occurred to me at the time.

Here's the math for those who care:
Heroic Souldrinker - 1.7% of max HP (~165k) is 2800 damage per proc. Even with rallying cry and HP/DPS buffs from madness, you can barely get a 5k proc.
LFR No'Kaled - 6781-10171 per proc.

Both are reported as having a 15% proc rate with no ICD.

SD loses to HoM within every tier because the stats are more valuable than the proc (15% chance of 2800 damage).
SD also loses to HoM of the next tier higher because the extra ilvl gives higher base weapon damage.

Were Souldrinker's proc actually useful, rallying cry could be used to boost dps; as is, you should use any other weapon or just respec to TG.